Taking steps to be heard

My friend Heather was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease when she was 18 years old, after she lost ~80 pounds in less than a year. She was so ill that she ended up with an ileostomy (meaning, everything from the middle of her small intestine to her rectum was removed) at 21, was healthy enough to get married at 22, and went through nursing school and had two healthy pregnancies. In the last few years, however, she’s been through several new flareups of her disease, and has tried every therapy and drug available to combat her illness. For the past year she was out of work on disability leave, being fed pink goo through a central port 12 hours a day, but recently had to return to work in order to keep her benefits. Then, her husband was laid off of his job of over 10 years.

A few months ago, Heather had to take a chance on one final experimental medication, one that had a nonzero percent chance of killing her: Tysabri has been known to make patients susceptible to contracting progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease. Luckily, so far she seems to be encephalopathy-free but the first couple of Tysabri infusions did make her ill enough to be hospitalized for a few days. Recently, she was given the news that the Tysabri isn’t helping her Crohn’s get any better – but she’s not getting any worse, either. She can only be on the Tysabri for a year and after that there aren’t any more treatments or drugs to try.

A couple of weeks ago, Heather was asked to be the guest speaker at a local walk to raise awareness and funds for Crohn’s and colitis research, honored as a “local hero.” The walk was sponsored by the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America, and the funds raised by Heather’s team and the other teams walking in the event went directly toward research for new therapies. Heather has hope that something new will be discovered in the next year or so that will allow her to keep having reasonably good quality of life so she can continue to be a good nurse for her patients, a good mom to her a kids, and a good wife to her husband.

Dan and I raised over $200, Heather’s team of 40+ people raised over $2,700, and the whole event raised over $17,000 toward education and research to fight these terrible diseases. We attended the CCFA’s “Wine Country Take Steps for Crohn’s and Colitis” event a couple of weeks ago and here’s some of the photographic evidence.

Walk start/finish

A band played some stuff. I wasn’t paying all that much attention to them.

It wouldn’t be wine country without a winery sponsor. Korbel is local and pretty good, and I wasn’t about to pass up free champagne.

They even made their table look pretty.

Here’s Heather giving her speech. I wish I had video; it was a great speech, very Heather – as a nurse, she never shies away from being completely frank and honest about health- and medical-related stuff. I learned during her speech that the eye infection she had for months when she was 18 turned out to be the first sign of Crohn’s disease. She’s been actively ill with her disease for 14 years, but the past year has been some of the worst of it.

After Heather’s speech, we walked two miles around downtown Santa Rosa. We were given maracas as noisemakers and several of the teams held banners. Heather’s team was the largest; I think over 40 people were there to support her. Occupy Santa Rosa was also going on at the time, and we got an awful lot of honking as cars drove by, which I think was perhaps because they thought we were part of that group.

Here’s Heather finishing the two-mile walk. Considering there have been many days of hospitalization in the past year and many more days when she could hardly get out of bed, a two-mile walk is a huge undertaking for her – but she did it!

Me with Heather

Official photo taken by event coordinator. Can you spot us in the crowd?

This is what I said yesterday into a microphone at the wedding.

Hi everyone. I’m Emily, Leah’s* best lady today.

Many of you have known Leah or Simon their entire lives. You knew them as children, as teenagers, and as young adults just starting their lives. You’ve known them on their own, before they were a couple. I have ONLY known Leah and Simon as a couple, and I have a hard time imagining them without each other.

I met Leah the same way I met my husband – on the internet. I highly recommend it, by the way, as a good way to meet people. In 2006, when Dan and I were planning a trip to the Bay Area, I sent Leah an email asking if she and Simon might be interested in meeting up during our visit. The four of us had sushi and spent hours chatting and laughing at an English pub. We all hit it off and got along great, which you never know about when meeting people from the internet in real life.

Since then, I’ve watched Leah and Simon grow as a couple, and heard about their grand adventures. I was thrilled when they found a house to buy together. In early 2008, my husband Dan asked Simon to be a groomsman in our wedding, and only a few weeks later they found out they would be having Wombat in December. (It was planned, by the way.) I was so happy to be able to see and hear about Leah and Simon’s adventures in pregnancy and cheered when Simon called to let us know Wombat had been born. We celebrated that night by drinking Leah and Simon’s favorite pink champagne.

Over the years, when Dan and I visited the Bay Area, Leah and Simon have put themselves out to host us, make us feel welcome, and to have adventures with us. Watching them navigate their lives as parents has made it very clear how well they work together as a team, and how happy they are together. I was so honored when Leah asked me to stand up with her today, to be a part of their somewhat unconventional timeline. But knowing Leah and Simon as well as I do, they did things exactly the right way for them. So here’s to the next chapter in this family’s adventure. To Leah and Simon and Wombat!

*When I said this into a microphone at the wedding, I used their real names.

Push

Today’s Wednesday bike ride involved a 33 mile roundtrip from here to the plaza in the middle of Healdsburg. Because Dan tends to want to go quite a bit faster than I’m able to go, he’s often half a mile or more ahead of me on these long bike rides. I actually kind of like that, because, after more than six weeks of Enforced Togetherness, it gives me a chance to feel like I’ve got some space. I think deep thoughts and shallow thoughts and everything in between. Earworms pass in and out. I have memories of areas we’re riding by, and I wish I had an eyeball camera in order to easily and safely capture what I’m seeing.

* * * * * *

We rode by my elementary school, and we rode by my preschool. The route we took was the same way the bus goes, which made me think of some of the times I was on the bus and saw people I knew (and even the time I made a new friend). Each place we passed that reminded me of a moment (wine tasting with my visiting cowboy friend; going to piano lessons in elementary school; high school hijinks) was tied with a physical movement. Pump the pedals, breathe rhythmically, stretch my back, shift gears, blink against the bright sun. Moving back here has given me a chance to relive moments from my life that I never expected to think about again, and I only share it with myself because Dan’s speeding along, far ahead of me.

* * * * *

There’s this amazing, pulsating beauty in a flock of starlings. Each individual bird might be eating or pooping or resting in a vineyard, and suddenly a collective consciousness emerges and every bird flies into the air, in a choreographed dance. Hundreds of birds make up a mass of shape-changing living pointilism, that ebbs and flows and changes direction suddenly, and each individual bird somehow knows exactly what the group is doing next. It’s like watching an aerial ballet. It’s not something you can capture with a photo, but maybe I’ll be lucky and catch some starling ballet on video one of these days.

* * * * *

While the smell of the crush is pretty freaking amazing, the smell of the ferment is far, far less nice.

* * * * *

Today’s ride was by far the longest one I’ve ever done, and the last few miles were punctuated by a series of hills. My legs were already jelly, my neck burning, my hands cramped and my ass bruised and sore, and I still had those challenging hills to tackle before I could stop moving for a while. I was reminded of the marathon training we did all those years ago, having to call on my energy reserves, knowing that I was capable of finishing the ride even if my body complained about the task ahead. I began to focus on muscles in my legs and body that weren’t the dominant ones; the small spaces between the large muscles instead of the exhausted quads and screaming hip flexors. Push-pull-push-pull, downshifting more than I would have liked in order to make that last hill, crunching into the semi-functional third gear on the straightaways to give my legs a chance to rest from the constant up-and-down motion, straining my ears to listen for cars coming up behind me so I could move further to the side of the road.

My rational thought was pushed aside by my need to concentrate entirely on the physical strength and agility required to get me home. I didn’t have a single thought the last two miles of the ride, other than to marvel that I’d managed to keep up with Dan, knowing that probably meant it was because he was completely exhausted. I wasn’t wrong. 33 miles was definitely challenging, and while I’m proud of our accomplishment, we were both totally worn out and useless for the rest of the day. At least it’ll probably mean I’ll finally sleep well tonight.

Wednesdays

It sure is pretty here.

Two weeks ago on a Wednesday, Dan and I decided we needed to get out of the house and get some serious exercise, so we strapped on our helmets, got on our bikes, and rode all the way to Geyserville. Dan’s able to go much faster than I am, since his third set of gears functions and because he’s got street slicks on his bike instead of knobby tires like I’ve got. He makes the most of downhills because he’s heavier than I am, and I guess he’s just more used to bike riding for exercise, as he did it quite a bit when we lived in Denver. Anyhow, the ride was the same route as the long marathon training run we did, many  years ago now, when we were training for the LA marathon and in California for Christmas. Things go by much slower on foot than they do in a car or even on a bike, but the bike still gives you a chance to see details that you might miss in a car.

It was a cool, overcast day, but we were both sweaty and gross when we got to the middle of town. Geyserville has changed quite a bit in the last twenty years, and as we sat there, eating our energy bars, I thought about all the things that were different than how I remembered them being. I realized that was an exercise in futility, so I quit doing it. After a half hour or so of rest, we turned the bikes around and headed north again, and on our way out of town some lady yelled, “Go Giants!” at us. I was a bit too taken aback to be able to respond coherently (since when do people in GEYSERVILLE yell about San Francisco sports teams at bicyclists? I guess when they’re playing in the World Series?). The best part about the ride, other than feeling great at using my muscles, breathing the cool, wet air, and coasting on the downhills, was when we passed Geyser Peak winery in both directions. The crush was in full-tilt, and the air was almost chewy it was so laden with the smells of fermenting grapes. I enjoyed my brief contact high, especially on the way back as I needed something to keep me going on that long, straight trip home. Total mileage: just under 20.

These are the cause of drunken starling flocks

Last week on Wednesday, it was bright and sunny. We rode through downtown, past the cemetery, cut across the First Street bridge, and headed north on River Road. It was a beautiful afternoon ride through grapevines and past people’s houses and yards, and we continued north on Geysers Road all the way up to Preston, into Mendocino County, where it meets the highway just north of town. It’s a long, slow, gradual uphill, with a couple of rough spots, but nothing too hairy. We didn’t really need to rest much at all before turning around and heading home, although the long downhill meant that Dan was at least a half mile ahead of me for a good chunk of it. That was OK, though; it felt nice to be by myself even if we were technically out for a ride together. Total mileage: 12.5.

This  Wednesday, we decided to tackle Dutcher Creek Road for a second time. Only a couple of weeks after we moved here, when we were still having car issues, a friend who lives in Chico was in Healdsburg running the marathon there, and I thought hey, we could totally do a 35-mile roundtrip bike ride to Healdsburg in order to cheer him on! So I looked at Google Maps and decided, after much deliberation, that Dutcher Creek to Dry Creek would be the best way to go. We headed out later than expected on that Sunday morning and got totally murdered on the hill, so ended up turning around only about 4 miles into our journey that day and ended up with an 8 mile ride. It had been over a month, and I thought with all the practice we’d had that we’d be up for tackling the Dutcher Creek hill again.

The hill was every bit as murderous as I’d remembered, and I ended up having to get off of my bike and walk it for a while. Then I hyperventilated a little, so at the top of the hill we both rested for five minutes or so while I caught my breath and tried not to vomit.

The ride down the hill and onto Dry Creek, however, was totally exhilarating. Even with the knobby tires, I was able to go pretty fast, and zoomed right past vineyards and a winery and pretty scenery and a smelly dead skunk. We got to the junction at the bottom of the hill, and decided to bike north a ways on Dry Creek knowing it would be pretty flat. When we hit the north end of the valley just before you start getting up to the Lake Sonoma area, I nearly gasped because it looked like the whole Dry Creek valley was on fire.

DEL FUEGO

Maybe it’s just time warping my memory, or maybe my perceptions are accurate. But I don’t remember an autumn ever being quite this pretty here in Northern Sonoma county. The grapevines have been turning for more than a month now, and they’re turning all colors: claret and magenta, brown and gold, orange and scarlet and russet and butter yellow, pretty much every hue in the warm end of the spectrum. Sometimes on the same plant. Often in the same small area, on the same varietal of grape. So riding into that valley, and seeing the sun light up the entire valley was just breathtaking.

We don’t carry cameras with us when we do the bike rides, although perhaps we should. So after our trek home (and it was a trek; coming up the back side of the hill was even harder than the way out, since we were already tired, although I didn’t hyperventilate on the way back), we decided we’d need to come back with cameras when the light was good.

This morning, we did just that. It’s going to take a lot to top this week’s ride (total mileage: 17.2). Next week we may just have to try to make it all the way to Healdsburg.

A Burg, A Boone, 2 villes, and Team Chaos

OK, so it’s been a while. I had three crazy weeks (work-related) and then I took Friday off as a mental health day and it’s been hard for me to get back in the swing of blogging. It’s been nearly a month since we got home from our trip, but I promised I’d finish the recaps, so I will.

We left Philadelphia on a Monday afternoon and drove for several hours until we reached western Virginia, going through Delaware and Maryland without getting out of the car, sitting in rush hour DC traffic, and finally making it to Harrisonburg, VA, where there is noplace easy to camp (we found out the hard way after many false starts). We ended up having to backtrack 10 miles north to camp at an out-of-the-way KOA, with great facilities and (sadly) prices to match. It was rechristened “Suckburg, vol. 2″ (a long story) and then I realized that I would have almost no juice in my phone so I called our friend in Boone to give hir a heads up regarding approximately when we might end up on hir doorstep. Thanks to our interest in adding just one more state (West Virginia) under our belts, what should have been 5-6 hours took more like 8 and we barely made it to Boone before B/T had to go to class.

Old fashioned gas pump at a gas station in White Sulpher Springs, WV

It was hot, and we were totally sweaty and disgusting and the hummus went rancid and leaked all over everything in the back seat (including my shorts) so I rinsed ‘em in the sink and we hustled downtown and found the Appalachian State campus, then parked our butts in the library for 3 hours and soaked up the air conditioning, comfortable seating, and reading material. Ahhhhh.

I really enjoyed our visit with B/T, and Boone is beautiful, but damn it takes a long time to get there from anywhere. We were up and out relatively early in the morning after a home-cooked breakfast, and on our way to Asheville. After an hour’s stop (during which time we bought cold iced caffeinated beverages from a bus/cafe and mostly wandered around), we headed to Nashville. We had a downtown wander there as well, poking around in some of the music stores and watching some people play instruments on the street, and then we drove through the rain to eat barbecue at a pretty swell place.

Coffee bus!


Like the Vegas strip, only with more country music and fewer people with gambling problems.


All this for less than 20 bucks.

We had some additional camping snafus after sitting in some bizarre traffic in the middle of nowhere, but eventually (like, way way past dark) made it to a campground in that tiny piece of western Kentucky near Paducah that’s also right next to Illinois and Tennessee, near Land Between the Lakes. It was hot and gross and we were hot and tired and miserable, but the campsite was free and nowhere near any noise other than insects and frogs, so that was something at least.

In the morning, we ate at some low-rent Denny’s style chain called Huddle House in Metropolis, IL which is of course where there’s a giant Superman statue. So we had to stop there.

Superman is pretty big.


Sadly, his junk leaves something to be desired.

We took a long, hot detour through southcentral Illinois and had some more bad luck with food stuff in St. Louis and then came the long, long, long hot slog across Missouri. We stopped twice along the way to steal internet from Days Inns along the side of the road (B/T had a laptop cord we were able to use to power up the laptop) and try to figure out where we were going to stay. A $40 La Quinta room (yes, next to Denny’s) with A/C and a bed and a shower sounded like heaven, so we booked it and drove there, cleaned up, and went to dinner in a different part of Kansas City at a great restaurant recommended by Average Jane. We enjoyed our dinner with AJ and her husband and went back to our hotel room to vegetate.

In the morning, we met up with Cagey and Team Chaos at a Denny’s that was (again) next to a (different) La Quinta and had a great breakfast. Team Chaos were fun and funny and Cagey was delightful and it was just what we needed to start our last travel day. Which was long and hot and gross once again, driving all the way across Kansas and through Colorado back home.

Arun Macaroon and Peanut Butter Anjali!

So here’s the rundown of the trip, in numbers:
States visited (driven through or stopped in): 20
States set foot, ate, slept, or peed in: 17
Miles: ~5,000
Awesome last-minute Travelocity hotel deals located: 3
License plates seen: 46 states, plus 5 Canadian provinces (only missing North Dakota, Oregon, Vermont, Montana) (yes, we got Alaska and Hawaii!)
Friends visited with: 16 plus 3 kiddos
Friends we missed: Abby, EEK
Animals killed: One that we know of. We think it was a muskelid of some sort that ran right in front of the car, no way to swerve.

Trip: awesome.

The Turkeys (and the ‘burgh)

If I’m gay and Irish in Pittsburgh, I know where to go!

Or, part 3 of our Summer Roadtrip Adventure.

(Sorry for the radio silence – our laptop cord died about halfway into our trip and so I was unable to keep up with blogging. But I will finish all of my recaps, promise!)

So when we started planning the trip, the first thing I thought was that doing a road trip to the east coast would give us a chance to meet up with the Turkey family for the very first time. Jive Turkey has been my internet pal for a while and I made Sadie a blanket and a dragon and I was so, so excited that we would get to meet them. And then they said we could stay with them, which was just ridiculously awesome!

After we left Ann Arbor and had our little misadventure in Youngstown (serious. shithole.), we made it to Pittsburgh mid-afternoon and immediately took advantage of the fantastic email Jive Turkey had sent me full of suggestions of things to see/do in Pittsburgh, complete with links and helpful commentary. We’d already decided what we would do that afternoon, so we drove to the strip district, near the downtown area, and our first stop was at a Primanti Brothers sandwich joint, where every sandwich comes with fries and cole slaw. On the sandwich. Luckily, they had turkey as an option, but it was possibly the most messy sandwich I ever ate. (Equally luckily, it was pretty tasty.)

The lady will have the knockwurst, and I will have the same.

Full of sandwich, we set out to explore the strip district and then walked downtown, across the Fort Pitt bridge, and over to the Duquesne Incline, a cool inclined railcar, which we rode to the top and then took photos of the view. During our time in the downtown area, we began our found alphabet project, the result of which you can see here.

View of the ‘burgh

Going up

Fort Pitt bridge detail

By the time we got back to the car, we were both ridiculously thirsty and, between the two of us, downed about three liters of water that we had left in the cooler. We drove through the city, me squealing at the cute neighborhoods, to the Turkey Haus. Which, of course, is totally awesome.

JT had said they probably wouldn’t be home until 6 PM, so we sat on the front porch and relaxed for a few minutes until they, who were actually home, realized we were out there. We went inside and we all met and I rinsed the hot car slime off my face and arms, and we had a delicious homemade dinner and some great Sadie time and told them the story of the bourbon. I really enjoyed sitting on the back porch, looking at the stars, shooting the shit, and watching the fireflies do their glowbutt dance. We were treated to a guest room and all the amenities we could ask for and slept in for the first time on the entire trip the next morning.

We planned out our day, deciding to walk to our first stop, walk back to the house, and then drive to the rest of what we had planned for the day. Of the places we went that day, I can say that they were all exceedingly lovely, despite the heat and humidity and my stupidity at wearing a skirt instead of shorts. My favorite place we went was to the Phipps Conservatory, which not only has a phenomenal permanent plant collection, but had a super-cool gargoyle exhibit when we were there, among other art, and we really really enjoyed exploring every bit of it. I have so many good photos from Phipps that it’s difficult to choose just a few, so I may put up a set on flickr later. We had tasty pizza in a joint on Squirrel Hill and we went to the zoo and those were pretty good, too.

After a Trader Joe’s run (hooray!) we headed back chez Turkey and went out for dinner. Ms. Sadie handled it like a champ, even after she bumped her face on a chair (ow!), and after her bath and other associated bedtime routines, she even gave me a goodnight hug. AWWW.

I love the look on JT’s face here.

We got up early to begin our trek across Pennsylvania and New Jersey, so we only got to spend a bit of Friday with the Turkeys. I realized that if and when we ever spawn ourselves, I’ll have to use the DSLR, because even in the shots where I thought she was still, pretty much every photo I have of Sadie Rose is a blur. Still, I’m so glad we were able to make the stop in Pittsburgh and spend time with the Turkey family, because they totally totally rule. And Pittsburgh is a beautiful city, with so much to see and do and explore. I hope someday we will get to go back.

Blueberries for Sadie

The Next Grand Adventure

Our friends Kent and Christine are finally getting around to making it legal, and they’ve invited us to their wedding in Connecticut on the 17th of July. There’s no power in the ‘verse that can stop me from being there, but I spent weeks trying to find a reasonably affordable flight that would allow us some time in NYC as well, but to no avail. I wracked my brain trying to think of ways to get around the seemingly insurmountable obstacle of spending nearly a thousand dollars on two plane tickets and hotel for a few nights, not to mention food, transportation, etc once we’re there, and I just couldn’t figure out how we could make it work.

Until one night, a couple of weeks ago, I hatched a perfect plan. It was so perfect that I stayed awake for hours past my bedtime because I just couldn’t fall asleep after hatching such a perfect (and exciting) plan.

We’re driving.

We’ve done long road trips before, but nothing quite this extensive. Dan’s parents have graciously agreed to take the kitties for a couple of weeks, and we’re going to spend the middle two weeks of July exploring the country, meeting up with old friends (and meeting with new!), having adventures and seeing some friends get hitched eleven years after their first date. I am super duper fantabulously excited about this plan, so let me tell you a bit more about it.

Our intention is to drive the northern route on the way out to the East Coast, leaving sometime during the weekend of July 10/11, and stopping in Chicago, Ann Arbor, Pittsburgh, and possibly NYC along the way before we make it out to the wedding on the 17th. Then, we plan to stop in NYC, Philadelphia, Boone (North Carolina), Louisville, and Kansas City on our way back. We’ll do a mix of camping, cheap motels, and maybe even couch surfing, and between that and the price of gas we won’t even come close to what the cost of the trip would have been had we opted to fly. Plus, this way each of us gets to add a few new states, we get to see people we like, and I’ll have a heck of a lot of blog fodder. What’s not to like?

So if you live in one of the above cities (or you’ve visited) and you have ideas, suggestions, or are willing to let a couple of crazy Strykers crash in your living room, I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

Just right

I could write a laundry list of all the things we did and all the people we saw/met/spent time with on our trip to California, but I won’t. It was a trip with exactly the right amount of walking, socializing, eating, exploring, and relaxing, with almost everyone I’d been hoping to see. We were hosted on Thursday night by an internet friend we’ve “known” for 9 years but never met, who not only went out of her way to welcome us to San Francisco and offered us a futon to sleep on but somehow magically knew that the thing I wanted most in the world when we finally arrived at her apartment in North Beach was an egg tart all ready to go.

On Friday, Dan and I walked from North Beach all the way down to the Mission in order to meet up with another internet friend, the person through whom we met/booked our wedding photographer. She and her husband got married just a couple of months after we did, and they were in town celebrating his birthday. The walk itself was just what I wanted: through some great parts of the city, and some not-so-great parts, and I kept feeling like we were in some other city that we’d explored together – New York, say, or Rome, or Seattle. But I knew where I was going and enjoyed “discovering” San Francisco all over again. Apparently, San Francisco was expecting me.

We arrived early, did some wandering through hipsterville, but the pirate store wasn’t open. We scouted out some of the stores along Mission for possible pinata procurement, and saw some creepy kid models in Zoot suits. We bought treats at a kindergarten bake sale (one leftover egg tart was not enough for me for breakfast), and relaxed on the grass in Dolores Park, watching the tennis players, listening to the tiny dog barking excitedly for his owner to throw the frisbee again! again! again! Upon arriving at the restaurant, we discovered that our internet wedding friends were just as delightful in person, and we spent a couple of hours chatting and commiserating. They left to have their own San Francisco adventure and we went back up to Mission street and bought the multicolored horse pinata. Because we’d split a piece of bread with vegetables and cheese, we were still hungry and so we then split a Mission burrito, with Mexicoke and too-sweet horchata, and then walked along, the three of us, back downtown.

All-told, between our trek across SF and back, and various on-foot trips in Emeryville (both secret-agent-style and mundane), we walked 10 miles on Friday. Thankfully, though Saturday was errands in the morning and preparation in the afternoon, far less of it was spent on our feet. Of course, no party is complete without the multiple trips to BevMo, the trek around the entire East Bay to procure supplies, or the princess tiara. Oh, did I not mention that? Leah and Simon came to hang out pre-party and gave me an awesome birthday present. And I got to spend a good long while exploring Brian’s backyard with Wombat.

The party. Oh, the party was amazing. We had the right amount of food, and a booze-, candy-, and toy-stuffed pinata, and balloons, and flowers, and waaaaay too much beer. Everyone from my mom to my oldest friend to my old coworker who now lives two blocks from my sister came, from near and far, to help me celebrate my birthday (belatedly) and also celebrate 2 years of Dan and I being married. There were games and hijinks and shenanigans, and the poor pinata did not survive the night, though it took some severe beating with a billy club and Dan’s bare hands to make him finally spill his guts. We wore him as a victory hat, when we weren’t passing around my tiara. I just wish I’d remembered to pull down the viking hat so people could have worn that as well. It was a three Dan party.

I got to celebrate with most of my favorite people in the world, people who I see entirely not enough, and that alone made it a success. That everyone there seemed to have a good time was just icing on the proverbial cake. (There wasn’t cake, but there were Mexican wedding cookies and PW’s lemon crumb bars courtesy my sister. Delicious.)

We spent Sunday recovering and cleaning, returning and relaxing. We saw one sister’s progress on the backyard, and the other sister’s brand new place, and enjoyed a sit on Leah and Simon’s patio furniture, all while being carted around in Brian’s Prius. We spent Monday eating sushi and gelato with the Irish German, and then shopping and relaxing in our hotel room in San Francisco. We found Dan’s new favorite burger joint after hemming and hawing over where and what to eat for our anniversary dinner, and split the champagne Leah and Simon gave us over a shared slice of tiramisu in our hotel bed.

I was sad to be leaving on Tuesday, so we hightailed it over to Ocean Beach and the ocean made me feel very small (and what the hell was up with all the foam?), and then there was a rainbow. By the time we were through with lunch and shlepping to the airport, I felt a little better. We don’t live there yet, but we’re working on it. Everyone will be there, everything will be there, everyone is waiting, and I hope will welcome us with open arms when it’s finally time to leave Denver and go home.

(Click on any photo to embiggen)

So, we went to California…

Hello, internet!

So…we kind of got in the car on Monday the 14th and stayed overnight in a $30 fancy-ish hotel room right off the strip in Vegas and then ended up in the Bay Area on December 15th. I so, so, so needed the break – having not been to California since May, I was extremely homesick. And we both needed to get out of town and away from our sad, Petra-less house. The drive out was relatively uneventful, the first day of which I spent approximately ten hours finishing a knitted giftmas present for my sister and her husband. We did not, as one might expect, gamble, or do anything other than eat and crash in our hotel room in Vegas.

The trip was exactly what I was hoping for – evenings spent visiting with friends and family, days spent visiting our Berkeley and San Francisco haunts. We spent an entire day in San Francisco on the 17th, topped by an awesome dinner at a Burmese restaurant with Monkey, up in NorCal for work. We slept. We attended birthday parties and threw parties of our own (complete with rockin’ mamas and wombats); I baked cookies in one sister’s kitchen for the other sister’s first hosted extended family gathering in their new house. We met new doggies and patted old ones; we got loved up by Linus and drooled on by toddlers and saw some live bluegrass and had actual facetime with so many of the people I love most in the world.

It wasn’t a white Christmas. It was green, and sunny, and warm-ish. It only rained on us once. We had sushi; we played games; we went to the movies (Avatar!) and slept in four different houses and opened presents and VACATED. And when it was time to pack up the car, late on Christmas Day, I was ready to come back to Denver, recharged for another little while. The trip back was also uneventful, and we spent most of both days driving listening to Alice Sebold read The Lovely Bones via downloadable audiobook. Dan picked up Loki yesterday and last night the three of us slept in our bed, still missing our sweet girl, but happy to be back together as a little family again.

Last-minute road trip, part 4: Old, Older

Sunday we had two main goals: to see the rest of the missions in San Antonio, something I’d never done, and to visit Natural Bridge Caverns, something I hadn’t done in many years and thought Dan would enjoy.

The day started off with a rainy breakfast of donuts, babybel cheese, and a giant shared peach in the car, and we found our way to the first mission, Mission Concepcion.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get any photos of this mission, but there wasn’t a lot to see – the main church part, the best preserved of the four, was closed for renovation, but we did poke our heads into some of the other rooms. Mass had just been held.

We made our way south to the next mission, Mission San Jose. This mission was by far the largest and most complete of the four we saw, and we were able to explore quite a bit, though mass started right after we got there so we didn’t get many photos inside the church. My favorite part was the still-functional mill. It continued to rain and my shoes and pants got soaking wet.

Next, we hit Mission San Juan Capistrano, where (again) Mass was being conducted inside the little church. We explored a bit but it wasn’t as big or extensive as the previous mission and there wasn’t much new to see – other than a priest in vestments going around the side of the building to pee. The lawn was full of giant starlings taking advantage of the rain to eat whatever worms came up out of the ground.

Finally, we arrived at Mission Espada. I really enjoyed this one, partly because the Friary is still used by the Church, partly because they were having a festival out front and I could tell the mission was a big part of the local community. We peeked our heads into the church and walked around a bit but the best part was getting lunch from the stands selling gorditas and aguas frescas. I think the turnout wasn’t quite what they had expected, given all the rain, but it was still festive.

Pants and shoes soaked, bellies full, we headed north to the Natural Bridge Caverns and took the original tour through the caverns, seeing all kinds of interesting formations, and going through back passages because some of the rooms on the normal tour were flooded due to all the rain. I wasn’t able to get the photos I really wanted to, due to the low light available, but I think I got a few good ones. My favorite part of the tour took us back up from the lowest point we were able to go, and when we got up to the top and looked down it was like seeing something out of Lord of the Rings: being in the mines of Moria or the caves that the army of the dead live in.

It was really, really wet inside the caverns, but since my shoes and pants were already soaked it didn’t matter much.